Student murderer sentenced

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published
1:00 am EDT, Wednesday, May 10, 2006

The former boyfriend of a 24-year-old Quinnipiac law student has been sentenced to up to life in prison for her murder.

A jury last month found Farid Popal, 36, guilty of second-degree murder, evidence tampering, falsifying business records and conspiracy in the death of Samiya Haqiqi. Authorities said Popal killed the Afghan immigrant in 1999 when she went to tell him she was not going to marry him.

"She was my little doll. We grew up together," her mother, Najiba Haqiqi, said in court Tuesday.

Prosecutors said Samiya Haqiqi, a first-semester law student at what was then Quinnipiac College in Hamden, Conn., left the school on a Friday afternoon to return to her family's Queens home and never made it there. Her locked car was found in a supermarket parking lot in Queens. Haqiqi's body was never found.